LETTER XX.
Achor’s Vale, June 6, 1818.
Mrs. Blinkinsop,
MY MOST AFFECTIONATE FRIEND,
Can I ever forget your concern, good wishes, prayers, and endeavours for my best interest? You have carefully watched for my good as a Sister, felt for me as a Mother, and done me all the good you could as a Christian. May God most kindly reward you, and if not in this world, in temporal things, he will own you in that day when he shall make up his jewels—and never will he let your dear children, perhaps, go unrewarded. He will be a God to you and a Guardian to them.
I hear you think of going into the country this summer, if so I shall not be favored with a visit for a long time. I hope you will not go, but that I must leave to your better judgement. I have been very much cast down since I last saw you, nor do I expect to be much otherwise. When we walk contrary to God, we know that he will walk contrary to us; but he has most kindly declared that when the heart is humbled, he will appear to our joy. I find the third chapter of the Lamentations of Jeremiah very sweet to me at times, it is worth your reading, as it is so suitable to my case and state, and no doubt you will find it good to read it very often; the former part no doubt belongs to Christ—he was the man that had seen affliction, by the rod of God’s wrath, and it is well for us that he bore that for us, or else we must have borne it for ever, in that place where hope never comes. You have found him a good and gracious Saviour. He has helped you in many a need. He has delivered you in many a trouble. He has enabled you to believe in him, to love him as he is set forth in the Gospel, a Saviour. He is well calculated to be a Saviour, as he is God with God. He loved our nature so well that he chose it in preference to the angels, though we had sinned worse than they did—yet such was his love for us that he gave himself for us. He lived an holy life of obedience for us, which the adorable Father imputes to us for our justification, while the ever blessed Spirit opens our blind eyes, and gives us to see, and feel our need of that righteousness; having none of our own fit to appear before God in, we need it, believe in it, trust in it, and hope to be saved by it. O my dear, kind friend! may you and I be better acquainted with God’s love in providing such a way for a poor sinner to be saved. May we have a stronger faith, a larger mind and affections, to receive Christ as he is revealed in the Word. The Bible reveals Christ to us, but the Spirit must reveal Christ in us. We are poor guilty creatures, and need pardon for all sin. He has shed his blood to make atonement—a satisfaction for sin, and having died for our sin, he is gone to heaven to present his Person and his Work to God for us. He is interceding there—he ever lives to plead our cause, to conquer our enemies, to carry on the work of salvation, to hear our prayers, to watch over us in our sorrows, to support us in our calamity, to deliver us, in his own time and way, and finally to bring us home to glory—
There we shall see his face,
And never, never sin;
There, from the rivers of his grace,
Drink endless pleasures in.
There we may meet to celebrate the riches of divine grace, and experience the joys of that friendship, which is only begun in this world, but is often sadly interrupted by sin and sorrow.
Fearing you will leave town, I thought it right to drop this token of my most sincere regard and gratitude. May every good be thine, and God be glorified in our eternal salvation. What is there in this lower world worth living for?—it is full of changes, trials, and sorrow. May we come up out of the wilderness, leaning on the beloved, longing to get home, and daily dying to all the world. Getting better acquainted with Jesus, by the teachings of the Holy Spirit. I feel at times very much deprest indeed, but have no doubt but that all things will work for good, and,
Though painful at present ’twill cease before long,
And then, O how pleasant the conqueror’s song.
God bless you, my dear, my much-loved friend—time is on the wing—soon we shall look back and say, He hath done all things well.
I remain, Your’s truly,
Ruhamah.